The sad and silent death of Yahoo’s EasyListener
July 7th, 2009 10 Comments
Right now, as I write, there is an ugly gap at the top right of all ITauthor.com pages. It used to be filled by an audio player called EasyListener, provided by Yahoo, that I just embedded in my side panel. It was the best thing of its kind because it was neat enough to fit in a slim side panel and it was simple. It read from an RSS feed, pulled out the MP3 files and listed them in the player. You just clicked on the item you wanted and it played the audio.
But Yahoo quietly choked it and hoped that nobody noticed. I’m not sure why they would do this. I’m sure they could handle the bandwidth of people pulling down the Shockwave file off some server that had been left to serve up the old webjay.org pages. Maybe someone at Yahoo just pulled the plug on that server and not enough people have complained. I wish I’d gone and grabbed the files while they were still there. I looked at archive.org but the URL was never spidered.
So I’m going to have to find another solution, but it won’t be for a while because I know there’s nothing quite like it out there, so I’ll have to do some switching around and PHP-ing to sort it out.
It’s symptomatic of the Web though: it seems like a solid, reliable structure, but it’s really entirely transitory and kept in working order by a lot of people and a lot of effort. It’s a bit like a car: as soon as you fix one thing, something else breaks.
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July 15th, 2009 at 4:02 am (#)
I have used Easylistener extensively myself and was horrified to wake up today and see that all of my players are gone--dead.
Tragic!!!
~e
July 15th, 2009 at 9:00 am (#)
I am absoultely gutted about this. My players have just gone. I haven't found any replacement either. It was such a cool player. Shout me if you find anything that can replace it
Sad day
Ed
July 15th, 2009 at 9:25 am (#)
Yeh, it's very strange for a company to produce something that did what it did better than anything else currently out there, looked good, and was being used by lots of folks on lots of site - and then just pull the plug on it. This is one of the problem with huge companies: sometimes they don't look after their own assets. No doubt somebody will resurrect it under another guise eventually.
Like Ed said: if anyone hears of something that does the same thing as nicely as Easylistener used to, please let me know.
July 21st, 2009 at 9:28 am (#)
I also was horrified. Easylistener had all the features i needed.
I still have a downloaded version of the easylistener code.
Unfortunately when I run that downloaded version It gives the error code "will only run from a Yahoo server". Could someone fix that problem ?
Alternatively this player with multiple skins could do the job:
http://blog.lacymorrow.com/projects/xspf-jukebox/?t=WinampSmall
http://blog.lacymorrow.com/projects/xspf-jukebox/?t=mp3music
The XSPF format of the playlists is slightly different from the easylistener.
I found a lot of information here : http://xspf.org/applications/
but still could not find a good substitute for the easylistener
please help !
August 14th, 2009 at 6:52 pm (#)
EasyListener has been repaired and has reappeared on my Web site.
The code I use in my side panel is:
<p style="margin-left:-10px; margin-top:0"><embed src='http://webjay.org/flash/xspf_player' width='170' height='200' wmode='transparent' flashVars='playlist_url=http://www.itauthor.com/category/podcasts/feed&rounded_corner=1&skin_color_1=0,-100,-29,18&skin_color_2=0,-100,-27,20' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' pluginspage='http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer'/></p>
The embedded player:
http://webjay.org/flash/xspf_player
now redirects to:
http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mig/playlistbadge/25.swf?referer=
which is where Yahoo moved the player.
September 7th, 2009 at 2:09 am (#)
Hey guys,
I'm the original developer of EasyListener and appreciate your sentiments. It was indeed a sad occasion when Yahoo! finally pulled the plug on the webjay.org server this summer. I apologize for any inconvenience anyone may have encountered.
@Paul - the actual SWF needs to be hosted on Yahoo! servers so it has access to call the Yahoo! Play This Page service. (A crossdomain.xml file on the Yahoo! server only permits access from other Yahoo! servers)
I believe the webjay.org server has been shut down for good, but as you have seen, the player itself has always been served off Yahoo!'s edge hosting service.
These files will be here permanently. So you can create your own redirects like I've done here:
http://musiclibre.org/xspf_player/?playlist_url=http://www.aurgasm.us&rounded_corner=1
Or update your embed codes to use the yimg.com server URL, (like you've done on the itauthor.co website).
Thanks for the memories.
William
September 12th, 2009 at 11:44 am (#)
Thanks a lot for allows us to put back that wonderful piece of soft back on line. definitively one of the best player i've used
September 16th, 2009 at 7:51 pm (#)
Sweet, thanks for this.
One thing, I can't get the skin colors to continue working - my code looks like this:
<embed src='http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mig/playlistbadge/25.swf?referer=' width='390' height='300' wmode='transparent' flashVars='playlist_url=http://www.thisissomewhere.com/player/&rounded_corner=1&skin_color_1=0,0,0,0&skin_color_2=0,0,0,0' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' pluginspage='http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer'/>
this used to be a black background with greyish letters and now it seems like it's the default blue?
January 21st, 2010 at 4:01 pm (#)
Are you here? If so I have a question.
January 21st, 2010 at 4:10 pm (#)
what's up?